Cities xxx (2013) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities City profile A City Profile of Liverpool ⇑ Olivier Sykes a, , Jonathan Brown c, Matthew Cocks b, David Shaw a, Chris Couch a a University of Liverpool, 74, Bedford Street South, Liverpool, United Kingdom b Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China c Fairfield, Liverpool, United Kingdom1 article info abstract Article history: This Profile focuses on patterns of growth, decline and renewal in Liverpool (UK) over the past 200 years. Received 18 July 2012 In this period, the city has seen extremes of both prosperity and decline. It pioneered many of the ele- Received in revised form 22 December 2012 ments of the modern industrial metropolis, only to deurbanise during a ruinous late 20th century decline, Accepted 28 March 2013 halving its population. The centre has now been successfully re-urbanised and the city population is Available online xxxx growing, but spatial inequalities remain intense. As a focus for policy remedies from across the ideolog- ical spectrum, Liverpool offers an instructive archive of approaches of continued relevance and interest. Keywords: Liverpool emerged as a modern global city, based around new systems of international trade and cap- Port-related urban development ital during the 18th and 19th centuries. Growth and wealth were manifested physically in grand archi- Economic restructuring Urban shrinkage tectural landscapes and the planned development of often pioneering modern urban infrastructure Regeneration such as railways, parks, docklands and public housing. Liverpool was among the earliest places to face Cultural heritage acute social challenges characteristic of the industrial city. Its universal importance is reflected in UNE- Urban governance SCO World Heritage Site status for significant portions of its docklands and downtown area. World Heritage Site The city’s population peaked in the 1930s with much of the subsequent century witnessing an accel- Spatial planning erating reversal of the city’s fortunes, as a result of unfavourable economic restructuring, war damage and key planning decisions. Throughout the 20th century Liverpool has been an early test bed for urban policies, sometimes applied from opposing poles of the ideological spectrum. In the switch from planned growth to managing and reversing decline, there have been numerous efforts to ‘regenerate’ the city’s economic, physical and social fabric, many have been successful, whilst others have been seen as deeply damaging, making Liverpool something of an ‘urban laboratory’ worthy of careful consideration and reflection. Informed by the historical trajectory outlined above, this Profile firstly discusses Liverpool’s rise to prominence as a global trade centre in the 18th and 19th centuries. Secondly, challenges faced during the 20th century are considered. Finally, the recent history of redevelopment and regeneration is reviewed and followed by reflections on the present city and its future prospects. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ‘‘a territory is constituted through the sum of the ways in which its presence (Brown, 2009). In 1886 the Illustrated London News de- inhabitants mythologize it’’ scribed Liverpool as ‘‘a wonder of the world...the New York of Eur- Verena Andermatt Conley (2012) ope, a world-city rather than merely British provincial’’ (cited in Belchem (2006a)). By the early 20th century, Liverpool’s merchant fleet was more modern and larger in tonnage than that of London, Introduction its streets held more foreign consulates and embassies (Muir, 1907: 305 cited in Belcham, 2000: 23), and its cargo handling ex- Over two centuries Liverpool has seen extremes of both pros- ceeded New York – and every port on mainland Europe (Port Cities perity and decline. The city emerged as a global port based around Liverpool, n.d.). As late as 1970 Liverpool was still the largest international trade in salt, slaves, raw material and manufactures exporting port in the British Commonwealth, putting it ahead of during the 18th and 19th centuries (Wilks-Heeg, 2003), eventually Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore. Its wealth was manifested beginning to vie with London in terms of global connections and physically in a plethora of grand architectural landscapes and the early development of the characteristic urban infrastructure of ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 151 7943766; fax: +44 151 7943125. the modern city, most notably the world’s first inter-city railway E-mail addresses: [email protected] (O. Sykes), [email protected] (J. (George Stephenson’s Liverpool and Manchester, opened 1830), Brown), [email protected] (D. Shaw), [email protected] (C. Couch). but also public parks, mass housing, planning and sanitation. The 1 www.sharethecity.org 0264-2751/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2013.03.013 Please cite this article in press as: Sykes, O., et al. A City Profile of Liverpool. J. Cities (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2013.03.013 2 O. Sykes et al. / Cities xxx (2013) xxx–xxx self-confidence with a year as European Capital of Culture in 2008, generally considered a success (though not without its crit- ics), and the development of the largest newly-built national mu- seum in Britain for a century, immodestly dedicated to the city itself. Beyond the city centre, regeneration initiatives encompass numerous training and business enterprise support programmes, worklessness-alleviation schemes, area-based physical regenera- tion programmes, housing renewal projects, a (hitherto) rapidly expanding airport and business/science park developments. Taken as a whole, such activity is seen by commentators to have had a positive effect upon the city, its economy, internal psychology and external image (Boland, 2008). The city’s economic growth rate over the 15 years preceeding the 2007/2008 global economic crisis was higher than that of other UK ‘peripheral’ cities (LCC, 2011). Growth in average earnings out-performed the Great Brit- ain average between 2002 and 2009, as did the rate of employ- Graph 1. Liverpool population growth and decline in the 18th and 20th centuries. ment growth between 1998 and 2009 (LCC, 2011). The trend Source: Peter Brown, University of Liverpool, Department of Civic Design. towards vertiginous population decline of the latter decades of the 20th century stabilised, with the latest (2011) census showing a 5.5% population increase since 2001, to 466,400 (ONS, 2012)– legacy of this era is reflected in UNESCO World Heritage Site status, psychologically powerful as the first rise since the 1930s, and and the city’s contemporary claim to have the most architecturally the largest (proportionally) since the 19th century. In 2010 the ‘listed’ (protected) buildings in the UK outside London. Merseyside metropolitan county population stood at 1,353,400, Liverpool’s core population growth during the 19th century and that of the slightly wider ‘Liverpool City Region’ 1,472,700 mirrored its strategic and economic prominence, rising from (LCC, 2011). 78,000 in 1801 to 870,000 in the mid-1930s (Graph 1), with over Yet despite such encouraging trends, challenges remain sub- a million people living in its immediate urban area by 1900. From stantial. Whilst economic growth rates have been positive, the ci- this peak, much of the 20th century by contrast witnessed an ty’s Gross Value Added per capita in 2009 remained below both accelerating reversal of fortunes, with the core population sinking the Core Cities2 and national average (£19,647 in Liverpool, com- to 430,000 by 2001. pared with £21,103 for the UK and £21,889 for the Core Cities) As a result of external economic circumstances (changes in the (LCC, 2011). Moreover, in a 2012 study comparing the UK’s 64 pri- terms of trade to favour Britain’s south and east coast ports, air mary urban areas, ‘think tank’ Centre for Cities ranked Liverpool transport and maritime containerisation), exacerbated by key amongst the lowest for a number of key economic, demographic planning decisions (the planned ‘overspill’ clearance of some and social indicators (Centre for Cities, 2012). Liverpool is the most 160,000 people, and catastrophic failures of costly comprehensive deprived borough in England. Spatially concentrated deprivation is area redevelopment projects), by the 1980s the core population fell among the most acute in the UK in Liverpool’s central, northern below 500,000 and unemployment rates reached almost 40% in and peripheral residential districts, with some 70% of the city’s 33 certain neighbourhoods (Census, 1981). Liverpool was seen by electoral wards within the 10% most deprived in England and Wales. some as a ‘beaten city’ – the ‘shock city’ of the post-industrial ‘Healthy life expectancy’ differentials between the city region’s age (Belchem, 2006b). wealthiest and poorest wards vary by up to 30 years. Liverpool and Liverpool’s vivid socio-economic and environmental degrada- its wider conurbation therefore remain a place of contrast and social tion, alongside its rich cultural capital and architectural legacies and spatial disparities. (often seen as being at risk), has given momentum to intensive In keeping with other City Profiles (see for example Ellis & Kim, processes of ‘regeneration’, latterly drawing upon large sums of na- 2001) the goal here is not to comprehensively rehearse the histor- tional and European Union monies. Ahead of many other urban ical evolution of Liverpool in fine empirical detail, but rather to localities, processes of regeneration have led to the formation of provide a synoptic treatment of key trends, themes and narratives, new semi-permanent governance frameworks, involving multi-le- reflecting the city’s ongoing ‘story’. An overview of the city’s evolu- vel ‘collaborative milieus’ of local, regional and national institu- tion is presented as context for a discussion of the recent past and tions. ‘Regeneration’ has become the city’s dominant, if seldom future prospects.